Budget Crunches and Genealogy

We in Boston suffer from an abundance of riches when it comes to libraries and depositories.  We have the oldest state historical society (1791) and the oldest genealogical society (1845).  We have the oldest public school (Boston Latin, 1635) and across the river the oldest university, Harvard (1636) with the oldest university library (1638).  In addition we have the Boston Athenaeum (1807) and the Boston Public Library (1848), surprisingly, the youngest of all these institutions.

The Boston Public Library is going to be suffering from budget cutbacks.  It's no surprise.  My political take on this is below.  However, we have just been told that the newspaper room will be closed.  Not hours shortened, closed.  For good. I was a librarian at Widener Library, the main research library at Harvard from 1996 to 1999.  Students and faculty always asked me why we didn't have long runs of newspapers.  Here's the answer.  From the year 1850 to the present, there was a gentleman's agreement about whom should collect what at these institutions so close together.  I say gentleman because ladies didn't run these institutions until recently.  NEHGS collected all things genealogical.  Try and find something genealogical at either the BPL or Harvard.  The BPL collected all newspapers.  Their collection of Massachusetts newspapers is unparalleled. They also had the rest of the nation's newspapers.  Harvard, nor the NEHGS ever collected such things. There was no need to do so.

True, today much is available on the Internet via subscription databases.  However, the fools who run such databases are pricing themselves out of the market.  Already, most libraries have killed Proquest's major cities newspapers and elect just the New York Times and their local big city newspaper. When the St. Louis newspaper came online, I wanted to use it for genealogical purposes, but no one had it other than St. Louis, because no one could afford to have it. 

Sorry to say that this is the tip of the iceberg.  More cuts are on the way and we are the first to feel it, because, and somewhat rightly, we are of no consequence (we=genealogists).  Libraries will be the first to go.  You can't shut down the police, fire departments, and hospitals.  Schools will be pinched but can't go either.  It's coming because it's second grade mathematics.  In a world where idiots think you can shrink the size of government, cut taxes, and not address a debt the size of Jupiter, it will be a never ending budgetary process of cut, cut, cut.  Because there is no money.  No money.  None.

More political ranting below the fold.  If you are an asshole Tea Party member, please get off my blog now.

Has there ever been such mass ignorance as the Tea Party movement?  Has there ever been such hypocrisy?  For eight long years, they allowed the republican president to spend us into oblivion, and because they themselves were republicans, they said NOTHING.  And now they blame it on the guy who's trying to fix the fucking problem.  I wish them all manner of ill will. 

Some conservative talk show asshole had David Frum, the conservative economist on (he worked for George W. Bush).  The guy said: we should do a 5% pay cut across all federal employees to help balance the budget.  To which Frum correctly said: If you fired all federal employees and paid them nothing you would only save $260 billion.  It still wouldn't balance the budget.

In all polls the three things conservatives and the Tea Party idiots won't touch are Defense, Social Security and Medicare.  Well, the budget will never be balanced then.  Did you know that if you dropped the entire portion of the federal budget out that is discretionary spending, minus defense, you still can't balance the budget?  You want to know why?  The Bush tax cuts of 2001.  If you voted for Bush in 2004, you should have to give up your house and live in squalor for the rest of your life.  Because you are that stupid. 

And state budgets are no different nor are local budgets.  I left California because it is the land of idiots.  Every election there is a bazillion referendum questions.  Do you want a school? yes.  Do you want a hospital? yes.  Do you want to pay for it? no.  California is sure to be the first state to go belly up.  And they deserve it too.

It's all second grade mathematics folks.  The money coming in must equal the money going out.  You either have to cut or raise taxes.  If you are hell bent on not raising taxes, you need to seriously control and cut Social Security, Medicare, and Defense Spending.  Oh, and why is Medicare so outrageous?  Because of health care costs.  How do we do something about that?  Well, passing health care reforms would be a start, but evidently that is fucking socialism.  When this country ends (and trust me it will end and not well), it will be the Tea Party people who killed it.  They are so ignorant, they don't even understand what they are doing.

Comments

[Bruce Roberts]

I wrote a comment that was... quite proper in language, although critical in a different way of Tea Party economics, but the blogspot program wouldn't accept it, despite several attempts to post it, and in trying to find out why (through the webpage administrator) I managed to lose the whole thing.

What's up with that? (I spent some time, now wasted, on it.) I'm curious if this will go through, or if anything written in response is regarded as unacceptable.

[Bruce Roberts]

OK, I guess saccharine goes through. I’ll try again.

Martin’s language is strong in his post, but appropriate, given the level of in-your-face, self-righteous (and selfish) anger I associate with Tea Party quotes.

But I disagree with Martin’s statement that state and local budgets are no different from the federal level. There is a real difference – budget deficits run by a sovereign nation that are owed in its own currency are very different form those at lower levels of government, and totally unlike anything that is experienced by business firms and households. As an economist, I am very comfortable saying there’s no reason to worry or lose sleep over the “huge,” Jupiter-sized federal deficit and debt, based simply on the size of what’s owed. We really give away too much to the Tea Party fanatics and other anti-government types when we don’t object to the usual “government-should-balance-its-budget-like-any-family” analogy. At the federal level, it really isn’t 2nd grade math (in some ways it’s simpler than that). Rather than try to detail this argument, I would recommend a very readable explanation at

http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-is-responsible-fiscal-policy.html

However, the political problem remains. The Know-Nothings have the political momentum, and that (and the weak economy) will continue to take its toll on all the state and local expenditures that play such a role in making civil society civil and pleasurable. “Private affluence and public squalor” indeed, as Galbraith wrote many years ago. I share Martin’s short-run pessimism (but not his invocation of “the end”), and if it were possible to bet on it for the near future, I’d go short on libraries, parks, education, programs for children and poor folks and (incidentally) genealogists and …. ad nauseam -- since, of course, “we can’t afford those things” ….. humbug!

[Richard M. Hunt]

Totally agree about the Tea Party crowd, although I call them gullible screaming asshats. Fortunately they're a minority and can't win elections.